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November 1998

The 12th TOP500 list was published at the SC98 Conference in Orlando, FL (November 7-13, 1998).

The Intel ASCI Red system at Sandia National Laboratory with achieved performance of over 1.3 TFlop/s using 9152 Pentium Pro processors remains the number one computer. Linpack performance measurements for the large configurations of the ASCI Blue systems in Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore is not yet available.

The 4 DOE ASCI machines and 6 SGI T3E systems take the top 10 positions. The performance level needed to be ranked in the top 10 has increased to almost 1/2 TFlop/s, up from 200 GFlop/s a year ago. Two of the top 10 systems are installed in the UK, all others in the US. For the first time since the TOP500 was started in 1993 no Japanese system made it into the top 10 machines listed.

Highlights from the Top 10:

• No Japanese machines in the TOP10
• 4 DOE ASCI machines 1 Intel (Sandia), 2 IBM (Livermore), 1 SGI (Los Alamos) represent 10% of the total Flop/s on the list
• About 0.5 Tflop/s is the entry point for the Top 10
• 2 machines are in England, both SGI T3E systems - all others are in the US
• Classified US Government centers and the 3 ASCI sites are the largest 'centers' worldwide using together almost 25% of the total performance.

General highlights from the Top 500:

• 162 new machines on list in the last 6 month, continues the trend of around half the machines are replaced every twelve months.
• #1 machine still Intel ASCI Red 1.3 Tflop/s
• #1 machine = sum of all 500 machines on the list in 1993 the TOP00 started
• #500 machine is located at Merril Lynch
• Entry level is now 17.1 GF/s
• About 2 orders of magnitude separates the machine at the top and at the bottom
• Today's top of the line PC is roughly the power of the machine at position 500 in 1993.

For more information about the sites and systems in the list, click on the links or view the complete list.